Search Episodes (Bail Out the People )

Halftime in America: Remy Chrysler Ad Parody

Added 02/07/12
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Wukan Protestors' Demands Still Not Met

Added 01/09/12
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Occupy Foreclosures

Added 01/03/12
2 Views

What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

Added 12/06/11
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What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change

[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:01 12/06/11
Amy Goodman reports on "Occupy Our Homes" for Democracy Now This week 60 Minutes gave viewers a good look at some of the widespread criminality that created the Wall Street mortgage boom and led to our ongoing financial crisis. They also saw some of the overwhelming evidence of illegal activity on the part of big banks, and were reminded that none of those banks' executives have been prosecuted. As ugly as the situation is, there is some logic behind the government's actions - and its inactions. They're acting on a tragically incorrect (but internally coherent) set of assumptions that can be summed up in one sentence. It goes something like this: "To preserve the health of the American economy, banks must be allowed to keep preying on their consumers." That's it. That's the logic. But there are two exciting "Occupy" developments this week that could change the equation - "Take Back the Capitol" in the District of Columbia, and Tuesday's "Occupy Our Homes" events around the country. Think of them as complementary actions: One is taking place at the site of our greatest government power. The other is bringing the action to homes where people have been victimized by bankers. People may not realize it, but there's power in those homes, too. The Logic of Injustice Despite their destructive behavior, the people who bailed bankers out and are giving them a free pass for their crimes aren't necessarily evil or corrupt. Well, okay, people like this guy are. But others have merely been so infected by misguided economic thinking that they really believe that the only way to save the economy is to keep shafting consumers and pampering mega-bankers. The thinking goes something like this: Our largest banks are too big to fail, and since we lack the will or the motivation to break them up or regulate them we must protect them at all costs. We've propped them up with TARP, quantitative easing, and $7.7 trillion in secret Federal Reserve loans, but they're still shaky as hell. If we prosecute any of their executives, their stock prices will fall and they'll collapse again. And they'll take the entire economic system with them. That leads to some grotesque miscarriages of justice. Nobody at Wells Fargo has been indicted for money laundering, for example, despite the fact that the bank has paid millions to settle charges of laundering cash for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered more than 35,000 people. As an experienced bank investigator working for the Senate observed, "There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure." The Bailout Nobody Knows And banks don't just need protection from their own criminality. They also need protection from their own lousy management. Their balance sheets are filled with toxic risks from their long run of incompetence, negligence, and greed. That's where you and I come in. Some powerful folks are afraid the banks will fail if they're forced to write off the bad loans on their books, or to stop profiting from loans sold deceptively or irresponsibly. TARP may be over, but there's another massive bank rescue going on. Who's funding it? We are. Every time we pay a usurious interest fee on a credit card, we're propping up the banks. Every time we make another month's payment on an underwater mortgage, we're propping them up too. Every time we pay an overpriced consumer loan of any kind, we're making another payment into the consumer-funded bailout that's keeping the big banks afloat. It would be great if politicians in Washington stopped using American consumers to subsidize banks that shouldn't even exist. But they haven't. That's where "Occupy Our Homes" comes in. Occupy Our Homes Tuesday, December 6, has been declared a National Day of Action to Occupy Our Homes . Its goal is to focus attention on the corrupt banking practices that led to the mortgage boom and today's ongoing economic misery for most of the 99 percent. It's also a day for helping people in our communities who have been victimized by predatory lending, criminal bank forgery, unfair or illegal foreclosure practices, and other bank abuses that victimize the public. Occupy Minnesota has already occupied an illegally-foreclosed home, and plans to do the same thing with another home tomorrow. Here in Los Angeles, where an inspiring victory has already taken place, OccupyLA will help two brave families re-occupy their illegally foreclosed homes . One of those homes belongs to a three-earner family that includes a gainfully employed woman with cerebral palsy named Ana Wison. Ana's household clearly seems capable of making its mortgage payments, but her bank's foreclosing anyway. And in one of ironies that have become all too common, the bank in quesion is none other than that Mexican drug cartel money-laundering outfit, Wells Fargo. The Occupy movement hopes to focus the public's attention on people like Ana Wison. In the words of the Dylan song : "Things should start to get interesting right around now." Demonizing the Victim Resisting illegal foreclosures is a good first step. It brings attention to Wall Street's criminality, venality, and plain old inhumanity toward the people they call their"customers" - but treat like serfs. It does something else important: It counteracts the brainwashing, driven by Wall Street and dutifully echoed by the media, which has demonized the victims of bank misbehavior. (We were trying to fight that brainwashing back in 2008, without much luck.) The Occupy movement has already won several battles in that war. If the public's attention can now be focused on people like Ana Wison, that can be a powerful blow against the Wall Street/corporate media "they deserve it" hype. What about the millions of people who have suffered because of the banks' predatory mortgage lending but aren't behind in payments or in the foreclosure process? We need to re-open the debate about the fairness of forcing any underwater homeowners to pay underwater principal on homes that their banks knew, or should have known, were going to decrease in value. After all, the same conglomeration of banks and corporate media that demonize homeowners as "greedy" and "irresponsible" spent most of the last twenty years convincing people that real estate was a sure-fire investment. Banks made an extraordinary amount of money off the bubble they created. The total mortgage amount outstanding in this country went from $6.2 trillion in 2002 to $11.9 trillion in 2009, a meteoric rise. And while banks feed off the Federal Reserve's unusually low rates, they've renegotiating very few home loans. Consumers also owe nearly three quarter of a trillion dollars in credit card debt, much of it being paid at unconscionable rates of 12 percent to 29 percent - while their banks enjoy rates from 0 percent to 3 percent, thanks to the government institutions created by those same consumers. Occupy Our Homes. Occupy Our Credit Cards. Occupy Our Payday Lending ... What will happen if consumers stopped blaming themselves? What if they demanded that the banks take responsibility for their irresponsible and/or predatory lending? What if they refused to stop this country's perverse economic role reversal, where customers have become the ATMs while banks keep making the withdrawals? If 10% of America's homeowners declared a mortgage strike it would rock the banking world. If everybody paying exorbitant credit card interest declared a moratorium on payments all at once, Wall Street would change forever. Think about it: "Occupy ALL Our Homes." "Occupy Our Credit Cards ... Our Payday Loans ... Our Buy-and-Drive Loans ..." I'm not saying these are necessarily the right tactics, although they very well may be. But what's most important is that we understand that consumers have far more power than we usually realize - provided we act together. Many of Washington's leaders will cringe at the thought, of course. "That could hurt our biggest banks," they say. It would be tempting to reply, You say that like it's a bad thing. Here's a better response: Then start planning to break them up in an orderly fashion. We're done living a life of indentured servitude just so we can subsidize their greed. Those are the discussions that we should be having. If powerful people on Wall Street and in Washington aren't worried about Occupy Our Homes , they're not paying attention. But with any luck, they soon will. ______________________ (If you've been a victim of mortgage abuse you can tell your story here . If you want to find an Occupy Our Homes event near you, you can look for one here .)

Occupy Sympathizer Plays APEC Dinner

Added 11/14/11
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Occupy Sympathizer Plays APEC Dinner

[LESS INFO] 9 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:04 11/14/11
Click here to view this media The more surprising aspect of this clip is not that someone who performs in front of these world leaders should openly sympathize with the Occupy movement, but that everyone was surprised he wasn't whisked away by security, as if that would be the appropriate or at least the usual response. Then we read further down and are told that few of those leaders were even listening and the irony becomes clearer. In any event, expect Fox News and the usual suspects to have a field day with this tomorrow. Brianna Keilar's blog report for CNN: > HONOLULU, Hawaii (CNN) - As President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and the heads of 18 other nations dined together Saturday night, they were unwittingly serenaded for almost 45 minutes by a musician playing a song about the Occupy Wall Street movement. "We occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts, we'll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few," sang Matthew Swalinkavich, a well-known local guitarist who calls himself Makana, the Hawaiian word that means "the gift". Makana was invited by the White House to perform during the APEC leaders dinner. Dressed in a suit, Makana at first played traditional Hawaiian-style music as leaders arrived at Honolulu's Hale Koa Hotel. He continued his performance during dinner, positioned next to the four tables where leaders and their spouses dined. Eventually he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt that said, in handwritten letters, "Occupy with Aloha," and began playing a song he recently wrote called "We Are the Many". Video recorded on a cell phone by Makana's sound technician showed some leaders turning their attention toward him as he sang the song, but most appeared not to notice. "I started out very cautiously because my intention was not to disrupt their dinner. My intention was to subliminally convey a message that I felt was paramount to the negotiations," Makana told CNN. "Eventually I got enough courage to go into it for an extended period of time. And I ended my show with the line 'the bidding of the many not the few.' I sang it about fifty times in different ways for them to hear." And here is a report by Yes Lab : > Honolulu - A change in the programmed entertainment at last night's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gala left a few world leaders slack-jawed, though most seemed not to notice that anything was amiss. During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana, who performed at the White House in 2009, opened his suit jacket to reveal a home-made “Occupy with Aloha” T-shirt. Then, instead of playing the expected instrumental background music, he spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his protest ballad released earlier that day. The ballad, called “We Are the Many,” includes lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw.... And until they are purged, we won't withdraw,” and ends with the refrain: “We'll occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts, we'll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few.” Those who could hear Makana’s message included Presidents Barack Obama of the United States of America, Hu Jintao of China, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, and over a dozen other heads of state. "We Are the Many", lyrics and video below the fold. We Are The Many Ye come here, gather 'round the stage The time has come for us to voice our rage Against the ones who've trapped us in a cage To steal from us the value of our wage From underneath the vestiture of law The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw And until they are purged, we won't withdraw We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few Our nation was built upon the right Of every person to improve their plight But laws of this Republic they rewrite And now a few own everything in sight They own it free of liability They own, but they are not like you and me Their influence dictates legality And until they are stopped we are not free We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few You enforce your monopolies with guns While sacrificing our daughters and sons But certain things belong to everyone Your thievery has left the people none So take heed of our notice to redress We have little to lose, we must confess Your empty words do leave us unimpressed A growing number join us in protest We occupy the streets We occupy the courts We occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few You can't divide us into sides And from our gaze, you cannot hide Denial serves to amplify And our allegiance you can't buy Our government is not for sale The banks do not deserve a bail We will not reward those who fail We will not move till we prevail We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few We are the many You are the few

Occupy Sympathizer Plays APEC Dinner

Added 11/14/11
1 Views

Occupy Sympathizer Plays APEC Dinner

[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:04 11/14/11
Click here to view this media The more surprising aspect of this clip is not that someone who performs in front of these world leaders should openly sympathize with the Occupy movement, but that everyone was surprised he wasn't whisked away by security, as if that would be the appropriate or at least the usual response. Then we read further down and are told that few of those leaders were even listening and the irony becomes clearer. In any event, expect Fox News and the usual suspects to have a field day with this tomorrow. Brianna Keilar's blog report for CNN: > HONOLULU, Hawaii (CNN) - As President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and the heads of 18 other nations dined together Saturday night, they were unwittingly serenaded for almost 45 minutes by a musician playing a song about the Occupy Wall Street movement. "We occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts, we'll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few," sang Matthew Swalinkavich, a well-known local guitarist who calls himself Makana, the Hawaiian word that means "the gift". Makana was invited by the White House to perform during the APEC leaders dinner. Dressed in a suit, Makana at first played traditional Hawaiian-style music as leaders arrived at Honolulu's Hale Koa Hotel. He continued his performance during dinner, positioned next to the four tables where leaders and their spouses dined. Eventually he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt that said, in handwritten letters, "Occupy with Aloha," and began playing a song he recently wrote called "We Are the Many". Video recorded on a cell phone by Makana's sound technician showed some leaders turning their attention toward him as he sang the song, but most appeared not to notice. "I started out very cautiously because my intention was not to disrupt their dinner. My intention was to subliminally convey a message that I felt was paramount to the negotiations," Makana told CNN. "Eventually I got enough courage to go into it for an extended period of time. And I ended my show with the line 'the bidding of the many not the few.' I sang it about fifty times in different ways for them to hear." And here is a report by Yes Lab : > Honolulu - A change in the programmed entertainment at last night's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gala left a few world leaders slack-jawed, though most seemed not to notice that anything was amiss. During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana, who performed at the White House in 2009, opened his suit jacket to reveal a home-made “Occupy with Aloha” T-shirt. Then, instead of playing the expected instrumental background music, he spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his protest ballad released earlier that day. The ballad, called “We Are the Many,” includes lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw.... And until they are purged, we won't withdraw,” and ends with the refrain: “We'll occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts, we'll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few.” Those who could hear Makana’s message included Presidents Barack Obama of the United States of America, Hu Jintao of China, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, and over a dozen other heads of state. "We Are the Many", lyrics and video below the fold. We Are The Many Ye come here, gather 'round the stage The time has come for us to voice our rage Against the ones who've trapped us in a cage To steal from us the value of our wage From underneath the vestiture of law The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw And until they are purged, we won't withdraw We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few Our nation was built upon the right Of every person to improve their plight But laws of this Republic they rewrite And now a few own everything in sight They own it free of liability They own, but they are not like you and me Their influence dictates legality And until they are stopped we are not free We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few You enforce your monopolies with guns While sacrificing our daughters and sons But certain things belong to everyone Your thievery has left the people none So take heed of our notice to redress We have little to lose, we must confess Your empty words do leave us unimpressed A growing number join us in protest We occupy the streets We occupy the courts We occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few You can't divide us into sides And from our gaze, you cannot hide Denial serves to amplify And our allegiance you can't buy Our government is not for sale The banks do not deserve a bail We will not reward those who fail We will not move till we prevail We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few We'll occupy the streets We'll occupy the courts We'll occupy the offices of you Till you do The bidding of the many, not the few We are the many You are the few

Greeks await the name of a new leader

Added 11/07/11
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Greeks await the name of a new leader

Added 11/07/11
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Chinese Leader Hu Meets French President, Bailout Still Uncertain

Added 11/04/11
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Baby Naming Trend; Tornado Upside; Obama Employment Pledge - N...

Added 11/04/11
15 Views

Baby Naming Trend; Tornado Upside; Obama Employment Pledge - NTN #087

[LESS INFO] 15 VIEWS | ADDED 18:20:00 11/04/11
Nearly The News #087 - Mock news, satire for your funny bone! BABY BAIL OUTS? Chicagodope.com is reporting an increasing number of new parents are giving their offspring the names of Wall Street titans and the companies they work for. Take little Morgan Stanley, born Monday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. His parents, Wanda and Robert Stanley say they chose the name to give their child a leg up. “We want our son to grow up with all the advantages that we never had, like having the government bail him out when he makes a mistake,” said the proud father. “We’re going to teach him that it’s wrong to steal from other people, but if he ever did we’d like for him to avoid going to jail.” http://www.thechicagodope.com/2011/10/24/wall-street-firms-top-list-of-popular-baby-names/ TORNADO HOME IMPROVEMENT A violent tornado that ripped through the heartland of America has left thousands of damaged homes looking slightly better, according to theindytribune.com. Theindytribune.com says locals say the towns of New Castle, Anderson and Daleville benefited most from the disaster. "When I saw this great big tornado hurling toward us, I was petrified," said one mother of three. "But when I noticed the improvements it had made to my front porch, I got down on my knees and thanked the Lord. Now, my house is only slightly lopsided." http://www.theindytribune.com/2011/06/tornado-causes-widespread-improvement.html And finally… PRESIDENT THREATENS EMPLOYMENT Theindytribune.com reports that President Obama has repeated his cruel and draconian threats to put more unemployed people back to work following next year's election. During a controversial speech outside the White House Saturday, Obama addressed the so-called "threat to the nation's welfare" of unemployment, with equally heartless members of congress also calling for the creation of thousands of thankless and miserable jobs for the American people to endure. "This administration is strongly committed to putting more people back to work," said the President. "We have already introduced several measures to try and stimulate job growth and by next year we aim to put 1.5 million Americans into the careers they are fated to suffer." http://www.theindytribune.com/2011/10/merciless-obama-still-threatening-to.html

Ron Paul Tries To Justify His Desire To End Federally Backed S...

Added 11/01/11
2 Views

Ron Paul Tries To Justify His Desire To End Federally Backed Student Loans

[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 16:00:57 11/01/11
I am no fan of Ron Paul's libertarian beliefs. There are some components to his ideas that align with liberals such as civil liberties and ending unjust wars, but if young people who recently jumped on his boat realized what his economic policies are outside of attacking the Fed, anti-Iraq/Afghan war and phrases like "economic liberty" and "freedom," they would drop him like a hot potato. Candy Crowley asks him to explain his beliefs that federal student loans should not exist to the millions of college students that depend on them. They are so 1965. > CROWLEY: One of the things that you have proposed there have been some controversy about is to begin to phase out, as you explain it, federal student loans to folks who want to go to college, federally backed student loans, that you want to phase out over time. At some point then you would have people who really don't qualify for private loans, who couldn't walk into a bank and say my son needs to go to college and I need a loan. They simply won't qualify. Are there just some people who won't be able to go to college that want to in a Paul administration? PAUL: No, I don't think so. Anybody who's ambitious enough will get to go to college. The problem is college costs to much. And with the good intentions of giving people houses at discount, you know, it ends up with a house bubble and the people who are supposed to be helped lose their house, same way with the education. The attempt to help people in education, all you do is you don't get better education, you end up actually pushing the price of education up. So we've delivered now hundreds of thousands of students graduating with a trillion dollars worth of debt? And no jobs? So it is a totally failed policy. Only a generation ago we didn't have government programs and people worked their way through college. And I was able to get through medical school and college. But it wasn't so expensive. So it's the inflation, the problems with the government. As soon as the government gets involved for good intentions, there's always unintended consequences and almost inevitably it back fires. And besides, let's say it did sort of work -- and it does work for some people. Some people get an education at the expense of others. But why should people who are laborers who never get to go to college, why should they be taxed to send some of us through college? So it not even a fair system when it works. But obviously it doesn't work. And that's why it is coming to an end. And now they have to talk about, well, we're going to have to bail out everybody, bail out housing and now bail out the student loans. But that's not the answer. The answer is looking toward the cause and the cause is spending, debt, printing money, inflation, too much government, loss of confidence in the free market, loss of confidence in liberty is what it is. And where is the responsibility? The responsibility is on the individual and family to take care of their needs, not federal bureaucracy. It just doesn't work. CROWLEY: But would you admit that there are people who need federal help, be it an education or be it in housing, or food stamps, I mean that kind of thing. PAUL: Yeah, there's always some needs. The market isn't perfect. But instead of having a trillion dollars worth of debt in a medical care system that's totally broke down, you would always have some needs. But that was in existence before 1965 but there was nobody out in the streets without medical care, nobody out in the streets that -- there were more people under bridges now than there were back then. And also, there were loans. People do loan. But even if they have difficulty, you know, sometimes it takes people six years to go through college and sometimes it takes people four years. But back then, there were jobs available. The whole thing was the cost was so much lower. So, yes, it will not be perfect but what we have now is this catastrophic mistake where people have a pseudo education and no jobs and all debt. I mean we've indentured them for a long, long time to come. So we have to challenge the status quo on how we run our economy and run this country. There were many more union jobs back in 1965 so I'd like that, but that's something he probably didn't think about. African Americans needed the Civil Rights Act passed as a beginning to start being treated like normal people, but he is against that along with the Disabilities Act. By the way, how does he know how many people were living under bridges back in those days? Let me ask Ron Paul a simply question: Does he know how much a single college text book costs for one class? How about as much as $400. if you're in your late teens and early twenties, how long would it take you to be able to afford that text book? Oh, maybe Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich's charitable supporters would just supply as many books as are needed for every student. Hey, I'm sure they'll pick up Newt's next Tiffany's bill at least. My bad.

Peter Schiff at OWS: "Walmart Doesn't Hold a Gun to Your Head!"

Added 10/27/11
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Peter Schiff Speaks for 1 Percent at Occupy Wall Street

Added 10/27/11
3 Views

Don't Bail Out People With Student Loans! Nick Gillespie on Fr...

Added 10/26/11
1 Views

Bof A To Lay Off 30 000 Employees In Spite Of Corporate Tax Br...

Added 09/13/11
4 Views

Bof A To Lay Off 30 000 Employees In Spite Of Corporate Tax Breaks

[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:21 09/13/11
Bank of America has made it official: They plan to lay off 30,000 employees to bolster their bottom line and keep stock prices high. Via Wall Street Journal : > We knew the Bank of America ax was going to fall, but we didn’t quite know the number. Today — after BofA CEO Brian Moynihan made no direct mention of job cuts during an investor presentation — the bank said it will cut about 30,000 jobs over the next few years. The job cuts are part of the first phase of a sweeping Bank of America efficiency drive. BofA said in a statement that attrition and leaving vacant jobs unfilled with be a “significant part” of the expected headcount cuts. That's a whole lot of attrition. As Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos points out: > Dealbook offers some insight into the lack of detail about 30,000 jobs and the emphasis on stock prices: Bank of America just isn't talking about it. When the bank's CEO described cost-cutting measures, he didn't even mention job cuts; that came later, in a statement that offered no specifics. Because to the big banks, jobs just aren't important. And financial reporters overwhelmingly go along with that. While I agree with that analysis, there's something else people aren't talking about here that jumped out at me from this Reuter's article: > The Moynihan speech "was pretty underwhelming. They need to address the bigger issues the bank faces ," said Jason Ware, equity analyst at Salt Lake City-based Albion Financial Group. Ware is exactly right. The whole "job cuts and attrition" thing is BofA's way of putting employees on the firing line for continuing mismanagement of their mortgage division. Reuter's again : > Yet it also has one big, fat albatross on its balance sheets: Countrywide Financial. Bank of America acquired Countrywide for $4 billion, a deal that has proven a huge headache not just in dollars and cents, but in terms of the bank's reputation. "Basically all the mortgages that Countrywide produced from 2004 to 2007 were excrement," Geracioti says. "The question is: What are Bank of America's liabilities from Countrywide? Some say $100 billion, others say, 'Who knows?' The liabilities could be ginormous. The government is hassling the bank in a big way." Bank of America has long held that Countrywide's problems were it own doing. But on September 2, the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued 17 firms - including Bank of America and Countrywide - for violations of federal securities laws in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. In an 88-page filing, the FHFA alleges that around 2005, top executives of Countrywide - which it labels as a "notorious mortgage lender" for its practice - "complained to each other at the time that BOA's appetite for risky products was greater than that of Countywide." You just have to love how these executives blame the government "hassling" Bank of America for their woes. Never mind that it's totally justifiable in light of how desperately they needed to be bailed out when it all came to light. Bank of America has a systemic problem that it's desperately trying to cover up: It holds billions in toxic mortgages. Those mortgages are probably legally invalid due to the sloppy paperwork/signature issues on many of them, and represent a large chunk of the mortgage scam that landed us in this mess to begin with. The only good thing to come out of this news is the shiny-bright message that corporate tax breaks do NOT create jobs. BofA paid no corporate income taxes in 2009 or 2010, they received a tax refund of nearly $1 billion in 2010. See how that works? No taxes and a big tax refund equals 30,000 lost jobs. Where is the money going? Well, let's see. In 2011 alone, $1,570,000 has been paid to lobbyists . How many jobs would that money have saved or created? They paid big cash bonuses to executives, too -- $900,000 in all, though they did manage to tie payment to stock prices, which have plummeted this year. In 2010, they spread around $1.3 million in campaign contributions, and those are just the ones we know about. How many jobs might that cash have preserved? It's really difficult for me to weep big tears over BofA's mortgage troubles, when they were of their own making and when they drove the engine that drove the crisis . If they're looking to cut costs, they ought to start by dropping executive pay to zero and resolving not to spend even one thin dime lobbying Congress or contributing to candidates. It would be a good start.